Allen Station of the Texas Electric Railway

Allen's depot was one stop on a longer line. The Texas Electric Railway was chartered on July 15, 1916 to merge the Texas Traction Company and the Southern Traction Company. Its three routes out of Dallas ran to Sherman and Denison, to Ennis and Corsicana, and to Hillsboro and Waco, 226 miles in all, the longest interurban between the Mississippi River and California. Promoter J. F. Strickland's cars used city streetcar tracks to reach downtown Dallas. Freight grew from 1928. By 1942 it was the last independent interurban in Texas, and it was abandoned on December 31, 1948.

What the plaque says

Allen Station of the Texas Electric Railway The Community of Allen, founded in the 1870s, experienced a surge of growth after the arrival of the Texas Traction Company in 1908. The town was a stop on the interurban line between Dallas and Sherman, serviced daily by hourly passenger cars from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. Two daily freight deliveries brought mail, produce, and railway express packages. After first operating from a farmhouse, Texas Traction bought this property in 1912 and built this brick depot in 1913. The railway became the Texas Electric in 1917, with service from Denison to Waco until it was abandoned in 1948. Texas Sesquicentennial 1836-1986

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Heard Natural Science Museum & Wildlife Sanctuary — 5.0 mi
  A 289-acre sanctuary in McKinney that Bessie Heard founded at the age of 80, with five habitats, a 50-acre wetland and 6.5 miles of trails.
• Rockwall County Historical Foundation & Museum — 18 mi
  A small museum in Harry Myers Park that keeps the evidence on Rockwall's rock wall, sandstone dikes that geologists call natural and folk tales call built.
• Fair Park — 23 mi
  The State Fair of Texas grounds since 1886, where the 1936 Texas Centennial Exposition left one of the country's greatest concentrations of Art Deco exposition buildings.
• African American Museum, Dallas — 23 mi
  Founded in 1974 at Bishop College, a free Fair Park museum holding the Sepia photograph archive, African art and A. Maceo Smith's papers, and the story of the Hall of Negro Life.

More markers nearby

• Allen Cemetery — 0.3 mi
• First Methodist Church of Allen — 0.7 mi
• Allen — 0.8 mi
• Allen Water Station — 1.1 mi